Digging at Tiwanaku, Bolivia: Preliminary Results from a Household Archaeology Excavation

MARSH, ERIK J.

Santa Bárbara

Jornada; Brown Bag Postgraduate Series; 2008

Departamento de Antropología, Universidad de California, Santa Bárbara

I just returned from Bolivia, where I was collecting household data for my dissertation. I directed excavations in the Kk´araña sector of Tiwanaku, Bolivia. Tiwanaku is well known to archaeologists, but very little is known about the era just before the appearance of "the state" around AD 500, and few projects have addressed domestic contexts at the site. While Kk´araña was first excavated in 1990, the results were not published, nor was the small excavation completed, which left house floors unexcavated. I re-opened this old dig and expanded on it, which revealed use surfaces and floors associated with five round and rectilinear structures along a large perimeter wall. While artifact analysis is still pending, the architectural pattern at Kk´araña is very similar to another nearby site, Khonkho Wankane. I will present preliminary results of the excavation at Kk´araña, and suggest some comparisons to Khonkho Wankane.